Monday, March 2, 2015

Five
years ago an article in The New Yorker
began with this description of Jeanne Gang’s Aqua . . .

She started with a fairly
conventional rectangular glass slab, then transformed it by wrapping it on all
four sides with wafer-thin, curving concrete balconies, describing a different
shape on each floor.Gang turned the façade
into an undulating landscape of bending, flowing concrete, as if the wind were
blowing ripples across the surface of the building.You know the tower is huge and solid, but it
feels malleable, its exterior pulsing with a gentle rhythm.[The New Yorker, February 1, 2010]

Look
up at Aqua the next time you are wandering along the river east of the
Hyatt.It’s a magnificent contrast – the
“pulsing rhythms” of Aqua lapping against the strict triangular symmetry of
Harry Weese’s Swissøtel. ‘

For
125 million bucks Weese gave the city the first high-rise building east of
Michigan Avenue that actually acknowledged, reflected and amplified the meeting
of river, lake and sky.Aqua, certainly
a presence in its own right, does nothing to diminish that.